The key investor has a history of legal issues

A key investor in the mysterious $ 100 million company that owns only one New Jersey deli has a history of legal issues and ties to several people who have criminal sentences or have been sanctioned by regulators.

They include a lawyer, an accounting firm and a former stockbroker who have done work related to the company, Hometown International. They are related to shareholder Peter Coker Sr., a 78-year-old North Carolina businessman.

Hong Kong-based Coker’s son, Peter Coker Jr., is the president of Hometown International, your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, had sales of just about $ 35,000 in the past two years together.

Despite these meager sales, Hometown International had nearly eight million common shares outstanding. On Monday, the company’s shares rose 0.15% to $ 13.01.

Hometown International, which has been trading in the over-the-counter market since 2019, catapulted into the dark last week after hedge fund manager David Einhorn mentioned his strange market capitalization in a letter to clients.

“Someone pointed us to Hometown International (HWIN), which owns a charcuterie shop in rural New Jersey … HWIN hit a $ 113 million market cap on Feb. 8,” Einhorn wrote in the Thursday letter. “The main shareholder is also the general manager / chief financial officer / treasurer and a principal, who is also the high school wrestling coach on the charcuterie side. The pastrami has to be amazing.”

Hometown shares typically see a daily trading volume of less than 1,000 shares. Some days he sees no operations. But on Friday, nearly 43,000 shares changed hands. Just under 15,000 shares were traded on Monday.

Coker Sr. is one of several key shareholders in Hometown International mentioned in the applications of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as entities in Hong Kong and Macao, China.

Public files show that Hong Kong entities are located on the same floor of the same building. This is the case for Macau entities, too. In Hong Kong, an investor named Manoj Jain of Maso Capital Partners has the sole voting and investing power over the shares of Homeland International held by each of the three entities, according to records.

Coker Sr. he personally owns 63,334 shares of the ordinary shares of the hometown, with guarantees of 1.26 million shares. Coker Sr.’s own company, Tryon Capital, is paying $ 15,000 a month through a consulting contract with Hometown.

Coker Sr. has been sued for allegedly hiding money from creditors and business-related fraud. He has denied the offense in these cases, one of which was settled out of court in recent years in North Carolina. He did not return repeated requests for CNBC comments.

His Tryon Capital partner Peter Reichard in 2011 filed a lawsuit in a criminal case that led to his conviction for a plan to illegally contribute thousands of dollars to Bev Perdue’s successful 2008 campaign, a Democrat who was elected that year as North Carolina’s first female governor.

The scheme involved the use of a fake consulting contract between Tryon Capital Ventures and a fast food franchisee who wanted to support Perdue. Coker Sr. he was not charged in this case.

Reichard is also a managing member, along with Coker Sr., of an entity called Europa Capital Investments, which owns 90,400 common shares of Hometown International and has guarantees of 1.9 million shares.

A footnote to Hometown’s annual report, submitted last month to the SEC, says Mr. Coker and Reichard “have joint vote and investment power over the values ​​of the company that owns Europe.”

Reichard did not return a call seeking comment.

Two years before negotiating in 2011, Reichard learned through a DNA test that his real father was the famous spiritual leader Ram Dass, the author of the best-selling book “Be Here Now.” Dass, who while working in the 1960s as a professor of psychology at Harvard under his name Richard Alpert, became with Timothy Leary one of the leading LSD researchers. He later traveled to India, where he became a disciple of a guru.

Mr. Coker, meanwhile, was a star basketball player at North Carolina State University after a stellar high school career in his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and before start your business career. At one point, he helped oversee investments in pension funds at Pennsylvania’s defunct Bethlehem Steel, according to his online biography.

It has also faced many legal issues over the years, including some beyond the business realm.

In August 1992, then-49-year-old Coker Sr. was arrested in Allentown and charged with “prostitution and other crimes after he was allegedly exposed to three girls while driving through Central School,” he reported at the time. The Morning Call.

The newspaper, citing police, reported that Coker Sr. he drove up to two sisters, ages 14 and 10, and his 15-year-old cousin, as they sat on his porch near an elementary school, and called them to the car and tried to propose to them. “

Mr Coker soon allegedly drove his BMW towards the girls, the newspaper said. The 14-year-old told The Morning Call that, to stop for a while, she pointed to her mother, who was on the street, and told her “she’ll take care of you.”

The girl’s mother approached the car and tried to remove Coker Sr., pulling out a thick hair during the process, the young woman and police reported in the newspaper.

Coker Sr., who was captured shortly afterwards, was also charged with child corruption and obscenity in this case, as reported by The Morning Call in the article, which noted Coker’s address at the time, which appears in public records.

Records detailing the outcome of this case were not publicly available.

Malcolm Gross, an Allentown attorney who previously represented Coker Sr., told CNBC Monday that he referred the employer to a well-known criminal defense attorney in Allentown after Coker was arrested in the indecent exposure case. That lawyer died in the late 1990s.

On Monday, Allentown police said a search of their files found no records of Coker’s arrest.

Gross had represented Coker Sr. in a lawsuit, where the American Express Bank sued him for about $ 900,000 unpaid.

American Express Bank in 1992 accused Coker Sr. of fraudulently exchanging hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets to avoid raising the money he owed the bank. He also accused him of filing bankruptcy in bad faith, given the fact, according to American Express, that he was solvent at the time of filing.

Also in 1992, The Morning Call reported that a corporation that owns Unclaim Freight furniture stores had filed a lawsuit against Mr. Coker. and another former corporate officer, who were accused of improperly taking at least $ 1 million from the firm.

Coker Sr. he had been vice president of the company and his wife, Susan, was also charged in the case, where it was alleged that he had been paid about $ 43,000 rent for a barn on his property in Macungie, Pennsylvania.

“We had not made the claims of Valley Advisors, so this resolution is good for all parties,” Coker said. in a statement of the time.

A review of the SEC’s filing and other CNBC documents later revealed other curious details about Hometown International and the people connected to it.

Gregg Jaclin, a lawyer who previously had no authority and was connected to Hometown International during the first financial proceedings, was sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission and prosecuted and convicted in federal court for a scam involving shell companies. . This scheme preceded his work in relation to the hometown.

SEC records show that a commission assistant director sent an email to Mr. Coker. in 2012 with questions about a company called Troy Inc. Jaclin received this email.

The letter reads: “We note that Peter Coker, its chief executive and sole shareholder, is also an executive and / or a significant shareholder of other shell companies that have recently submitted their registration on Form 10.”

Jaclin also received a May 2014 email from the SEC to Ramon Tejeda, CEO of TablacaleraYsidron, whose address in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is the same one used by Coker Sr.

Jaclin, who remains on federal supervised release, has not responded to requests for comment.

Hometown auditors Liggett and Webb were censored and fined in August by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Committee. One of the company’s accountants, James Liggett, was banned from joining a registered public accounting firm due to conduct unrelated to his hometown.

Liggett told CNBC he “doesn’t remember” participating in the audit of hometown records. He referred questions about the work at the company to his former partner, Derek Webb, who did not respond to the messages. Hometown’s annual report, presented last month, said Liggett and Webb have been the company’s auditors since 2015.

James Patten, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a financial analyst at Coker Sr.’s Tryon Capital, struggled at the institute with Hometown International CEO Paul Morina.

According to the regulator’s database, FINRA, the broker-dealer regulator, prohibits Patten from acting as a stockbroker or partnering with brokers.

Patten was the subject of repeated disciplinary action by FINRA, which included failing to comply with an arbitration award of more than $ 753,000 for violating securities laws, trading unauthorized and modifying a client’s account.

In 2006, he successfully appealed the sanctions imposed by an SEC administrative law judge in a case in which he was accused of manipulating the price of a share traded on the Nasdaq.

Patten was defended in this case by Ira Sorkin, the lawyer best known for representing Ponzi scheme chief Bernie Madoff, who died in prison last week.

Morina, who did not return repeated requests for comment, according to SEC requests, has 1.5 million common shares in her hometown, which on paper are worth more than $ 20 million, given the price of the current action.

Morina is also the principal of Paulsboro High School and is also the coach of the school’s renowned wrestling team, which is a perennial candidate for state championship titles. His brother, Carmel Morina, is a sheriff in Gloucester County, New Jersey, which includes Paulsboro.

Patten is the signer of a letter, cited in SEC requests, detailing the lease of the building to Your Hometown Deli, which is the company’s only business, from Mantua Creek Group. SEC requests indicate that Paul Morina is also involved in the Mantua Creek group.

The letter was sent to the other executive executive in her hometown, Christine Lindenmuth, who is a math teacher and administrator at Paulsboro High School.

Patten did not respond to any requests for comment. Lindenmuth has not returned repeated requests for comments.

Public records show Morina is the owner of the property that appears adjacent to the delicatessen, along with John Giovannitti, sporting director of Paulsboro Minor and High School, the principal of the high school and chairman of the board of trustees. Paulsboro district.

Giovannitti did not return any requests for comment.